UW professor overloads topped statutory limits

Records list 45 profs with extra pay over $12,000 in 2012

Mar. 11, 2013

Written by

Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team

Search the data online

Online at www.sheboyganpress.com/UWoverloads, find a searchable database of all overload payments made to University of Wisconsin employees in the 2012 calendar year. Two sections of Wisconsin statute detail the $12,000 cap on additional pay and the consequences for exceeding it.16.417(2)(a): “No individual other than an elective state official who is employed or retained in a full-time position or capacity with an agency or authority may hold any other position or be retained in any other capacity with an agency or authority from which the individual receives, directly or indirectly, more than $12,000 from the agency or authority as compensation for the individual's services during the same year.” 16.417(2)(a): (d) “The Department (of Administration) shall annually check to assure that no individual violates this subsection. The department shall order any individual whom it finds to be in violation of this subsection to forfeit that portion of the economic gain that the individual realized in violation of this subsection.”

State statute limits full-time employees to $12,000 in extra pay annually, but records provided in response to a public records request showed educators in some cases pulled in more than $20,000. UW-Oshkosh posted the three highest extra pay totals and seven of the top 10.

UW officials said, however, that inconsistent record-keeping skews some of the data.

The statute applies to any state employee working in two separate roles, which in the UW System typically comes as “overload” payments for academic responsibilities beyond the base workload. Most of the 60 employees over the cap last year were in instructional roles, including 45 professors of various ranks and seven lecturers.

“It’s not an excuse, but it doesn’t seem to be a widespread problem that can’t be fixed with some local instruction and coaching to the employees involved,” UW System spokesman David Giroux said in an interview Monday. “No matter how small the number, however, people should have been aware of the cap and the need to avoid such situations.”

State Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, said this is yet another sign of mismanagement by the UW System. Nass chairs the state Assembly’s Committee on Colleges and Universities.

“We’ve got a payroll and benefits system that they’ve spent $80 million on. They’ve lost millions of dollars sending benefits to more than 900 people that don’t even work for them anymore. Now chasing right behind that is this situation, and they can't even confirm the accuracy of exactly how many people (are over the cap),” said Nass, a frequent critic of the UW System. “It's just more reasons not to trust the university system, frankly. … They’ve got the educated people that should be able to track this.”

There was an effort to abide by the cap, as 90 UW employees received exactly $12,000 in overload payments. But in some cases officials say they knowingly exceeded the restriction.

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Tim Danielson, UW-Oshkosh director of human resources, said administrators generally made a “conscious decision” to exceed the statutory limits . Overloads were used to fill unexpected vacancies created by retirements and resignations.

“I’m sure there were instances where we had to makes a decision between, do we deny a student the ability to be in a course … because of this $12,000 statutory limit, or do we keep them on track to graduate?” Danielson said.

UW-Oshkosh had 18 employees over the cap, easily the most in the UW System, based on the data provided. The other universities with the largest concentrations were UW-Whitewater with 10, followed by UW-Stout with nine, UW-Superior with seven and UW-Stevens Point with six. UW-Milwaukee had five employees over the cap and UW-Madison had none.

Jennifer Lattis, a UW System attorney who provided the overload records on Friday, said that officials discovered inconsistencies in the way overload data was entered at the various campuses. But “it is likely that some individuals were paid (in) excess of $12,000 in overload payments during 2012, exceeding the cap currently in place for state and university employees,” she said in an e-mail.

Giroux noted the employees in question were due the wages they received based on work performed, even if it did exceed the statutory cap.

A Gannett Wisconsin Media analysis showed in January that the UW System uses overloads — also referred to as overages — far less than the state’s technical college system. In the 2011-12 school year, technical college instructors averaged $12,000 in overages, while professors across the UW System averaged $1,400.

But unlike technical colleges, UW schools have a statutory mandate to limit those payments. Statute says no full-time state employee “may hold any other position or be retained in any other capacity” that pays more than $12,000 in a calendar year.

The statute also requires the state Department of Administration to “annually check to assure that no individual violates this” and says anyone paid more than $12,000 must return any pay received beyond that amount.

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Giroux said the statute requiring repayment to the state must be balanced with the state law requiring all employees be paid the wages they have earned.

“I’m not aware of any cases where we have plans to go after the money from the employees who earned it, but we’ll certainly look into that further,” Giroux said.

The section was amended as part of the 2011-13 state budget to exempt extra pay UW employees receive from the UW System, but that change doesn’t take effect until July.

“This (repeal) acknowledged the need for additional management flexibility, where UW campuses need the ability to compensate people when those employees are willing and able to do additional mission-critical work, beyond their customary duties,” Giroux said in an e-mail.

Across the 26-campus UW System, about 3,200 full-time employees received overload payments in 2012. The overloads averaged $4,000 and ranged from $20 to $23,000.

UW says data contains errors

Lattis said UW System employees filling the records request found some payments coded improperly as overload, but the report was not corrected “because of the burden and added time it would have taken to review each individual case.”

Overload records were pulled from a central UW System database but include information entered by hundreds of offices across the UW System, Lattis said. Schools have varying coding practices and standards, so some items were incorrectly coded as overload, including some summer payments, lump sum payments to non-salaried employees and payments to part-time employees.

If part-time employees were removed from the provided records, the UW System data still show 60 employees with more than $12,000 in overloads. All of them received regular salaries of at least $40,000. There is no indication which employees may have been paid for summer work.

The top earner based on UW System data was Chad Cotti, an associate professor of business at UW-Oshkosh who was paid the $23,021 in overload on top of his $109,486 salary.

Alex Hummel, UW-Oshkosh spokesman, said the university’s calculations showed lower numbers than those released by the UW System. He said UW-Oshkosh calculations showed 13 employees were over the $12,000 limit, compared to 18 in the UW System data. The highest overload amount the university found was $17,039, to business Professor Barbara Rau. Her salary was $121,871.

“We’re not trying to justify the overages or anything — we’ve got to be more sensitive to that — but you need to be sure you’re serving your mission and getting (professors) to the head of the class,” Hummel said.

Sara Kuhl, spokeswoman for UW-Whitewater, said the university also disputes the UW System data. She said the school re-examined the coding and believes no employees exceeded the cap.

“All of ours that appeared to exceed the cap were because of coding errors,” Kuhl said.